I don't know what to write in those bios anymore @just-a-change - Tumblr Blog

Researchers look at countries that have prohibited corporal punishment for kids and their rate of youth violence.

Now a new study looking at 400,000 youths from 88 countries around the world suggests such bans are making a difference in reducing youth violence. It marks the first systematic assessment of whether an association exists between a ban on corporal punishment and the frequency in which adolescents get into fights.

puolikarhu

[F]or both boys and girls, [prof. Elizabeth Gershoff] said, “We found [spanking] linked to more aggression, more delinquent behavior, more mental health problems, worse relationships with parents, and putting the children at higher risk for physical abuse from their parents.”

“People often ask: Why didn’t you look for positive aspects?” she continued. “My answer is: We did, and there were none. We see consistently that the more children are spanked, the more behavioral problems they have in the years ahead.”

quasi-normalcy

Once again worth emphasizing that this is pretty much the exact opposite of what authoritarians said would happen

moniquill

This is an important study in the same way that many ‘water is wet’ studies are; it provides hard data that can be referred back to.

But yeah, startlingly enough if you don’t use violence to control children, they’re less likely to try to use violence to control others.

adurot

I have just learned that Mountain Goats are NOT, in fact, actual Goats.

adurot

I have never heard of this band. I AM in fact referring to the animal.

adurot

But wait, there’s more!

adurot

delphinidin4

rovermcfly

proud to say that I have never once in my life figured out the whodunit in any crime story I've read or watched. I just let the facts and clues wash over me, absorbing absolutely none of it. I am the audience they think of when they throw in red herrings, in case you've ever wondered "who would fall for this obvious false lead". it's me. I am the idiot viewer/reader. not once has an obviously framed clue revealed anything to me. my head is completely empty when I consume these stories.

derinthescarletpescatarian

If there are more than 3 characters I consider myself to be operating at genius level if I can remember who anyone even is.

sirfrogsworth

How do you take a photo of time?

I've been watching the track events at the Olympics since I was a wee lad. It was a tradition in our family. We'd gather around our ancient low-definition 19 inch CRT television and watch tiny blobs compete against other tiny blobs and root for our country.

It was a bit like watching YouTube on your phone in 144p.

Several heroes emerged.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee was amazing.

You can't forget about Flo-Jo.

And then the Olympics decided NBA players were allowed in the competition.

Which formed... The Dream Team.

Was this fair?

Well... they won each game by an average of 44 points.

So... no. It was not fair.

Though it became more fair as time went on.

But, umm... yeah. The other teams looked like the Washington Generals and the US looked like the Harlem Globetrotters if they stopped screwing around half of the game.

But my absolute favorite Olympian was a runner named Michael Johnson.

He was cool as heck.

For one thing... gold shoes.

But he also had this crazy, upright, Tom Cruise-ish sprinting style that just made him look like a running robot on the track.

And in the 1996 Atlanta games he just trounced EVERYONE. I mean, it wasn't even close.

Yikes. Those losing blobs are probably really embarrassed.

Last night I decided to invigorate my nostalgia and watch the track events again. And I got to see one of the wildest races in history.

It didn't even last 10 seconds but it was one of the most exciting sporting events I've ever witnessed. Almost every runner won the race.

After I saw that initially, I was like... who the heck won???

Even in slow motion I wasn't sure.

This was one of the closest finishes in history. There has never been a race where all 8 runners were within this margin.

The arena was silent as the winner was being confirmed. The runners just kind of paced around waiting for official word. My best guess was the Jamaican runner, Kishane Thompson. But then the loudspeaker announced Noah Lyles.

The last tiny morsel of American pride burst out of me with a big "Wooooo!"

I forgot what it was like to be proud of my country. I wish it happened more often. But this young man, despite being last place in the first 3rd of the race, turned on the afterburners and won in a photo finish.

And that's when my inner nerd took over.

Because when they showed the photo finish image, it looked super weird.

Why is the track white?

Why do all of the runners look all warpy like that QWOP game?

So I went down a research rabbit hole to figure this out.

Photo finishes are actually fascinating. The first photo finish captured the end of a horse race in 1890. But that was mostly luck and timing. The actual photo finish mechanisms weren't used until 1937.

Originally they would film the finish line through a physical slit.

And the first horsie head that appeared in that slit would be the winner. This technology ended a huge aspect of corruption in horse race fixing almost overnight.

But we have come a long way since then. And I'd like to introduce you to the Omega Scan 'O' Vision Ultimate.

This slow motion camera sits fixed on the finish line of every race. The concept of the photo finish has remained remarkably similar to the 1930s approach. The camera sensor is specially designed to only record a vertical slit.

Only the finish line itself is actually captured.

And because it limits what it records to only that slit, it can capture 20,000 frames per second to get amazing temporal resolution.

So why don't the photo finishes just look like, well... this?

That is because the camera takes a picture of time more-so than dimensional space. I guess it would be more accurate to say it *assembles* a picture of time.

As the runners cross the finish line, the camera combines all of the little strips of pictures into a single image.

It's almost like if you tried to reassemble a piece of paper after it had been shredded.

Imagine each strip of paper is a picture of ONLY the finish line, just at a slightly different point in time.

What if someone stopped on the finish line and didn't move... what would that look like?

Once they got there, the same part of their body would just be repeated.

So the right side of the photo finish picture represents earlier in time and it just assembles the image strip by strip as time passes and you literally get a picture of time itself.

NEAT!

Okay, but how do they determine the winner from the photo finish?

I mean, that shoe looks like it is ahead of Noah Lyles!

Clavicles!

The IAFF rules state the foremost part of the torso must cross the finish line first. And the endpoint of the torso is the outer end of the clavicle.

So if you get this bone across the finish line first, you win the race.

Two more fun facts!

The start of the race is actually just as carefully timed as the end of the race. There are sensors in the starting blocks of each runner.

The starting gun also has an electronic sensor.

They have determined the fastest a human can react to the sound of a gun is roughly 100 milliseconds. So if you start running before 100 milliseconds they know you didn't actually hear the gun, you just got antsy and started running too early.

And the final fun fact...

Did you notice the Omega logo at the top of the photo finish?

That isn't superimposed or added after the fact. That is captured by the camera.

But if this image is composed only of tiny little slivers, how did they get the Omega logo to show up?

That is a little display. And it is synchronized with the Scan 'O' Vision Ultimate to show a little sliver of the Omega logo for each frame captured.

So when the final image is stitched together, it looks like a cohesive logo at the top of the photo.

Pretty clever, Omega!

thefrogman

When I was researching this I originally watched a video that said the Omega Scan 'O' Vision could only do 2000 frames per second.

Then I watched a video that said it could do 10,000 frames per second.

Then the website said it could do 40,000.

I was all, "WHAT IS THE TRUTH, OMEGA?"

I finally realized the first video was from 11 years ago. The second was from 3 years ago. And the website is current day.

Technology!

I also tried figuring out how much a Scan 'O' Vision costs, but there is not a single price listing on the internet. All of the websites say "inquire for price" which usually means it costs more than a house. That tracks since the Phantom Flex 4K slow motion camera costs about $110,000. Plus you are probably paying for the system and the software and the setup as well.

It's expensive to know who won a race.

Also, I didn't include Usain Bolt among my favorite Olympic athletes because when I first became an adult I stopped paying attention to the Olympics and missed that era of sprinting. But I've since watched videos of him running and I truly wonder if anyone will be that fast again.

Yesterday, Noah Lyles ran the 100m in 9.79 seconds.

Usain's word record is 9.58.

In sprinting every 10th of a second is a HUGE deal. In 1936, Jesse Owens managed 10.2 seconds and it took until the 1990s to get down to the 9.8 level. So when Bolt bolted to a 9.58 that seemed almost superhuman.

brakingpoint

what’s the point of having a formula one team run by an energy drink company if you’re not going to let your driver stay up all night sim racing. have some faith in your product yknow

thegirlwiththeloontattoo

People say “phase” like impermanence means insignificance. Show me a permanent state of the self.

horrible-harlot

holy shit this quote changed my life about four years ago. so crazy that this just resurfaced. i’m really happy.

idontbelievethehype

Absolutely, irrefutably out of pocket behavior from Prime Video.

elizabethanism

“The entire British museum is an active crime scene” - John Oliver

savvysergeant

beatrice-otter

[image description: two pictures, one above the other. The first image shows a statue originally from the Acropolis in Athens, now in the British Museum. The statue is a column shaped like a woman. It is labelled London. The bottom image is from the Acropolis Museum in Athens, showing the other five matching column/statues, with a space for the missing statue pointedly left open. This picture is shot from above and is labelled Athens.

image in savvysergeant’s reblog: screencap of tags from two people. Feeblekazoo’s tags read: the degree to which the Acropolis museum is designed to shame the British Museum is spectactular. butherlipsarenotmoving’s tags read: the acropolis museum is the most passive aggressive museum i’ve ever been to and i love it

/end id]

For those of you who don’t know museum drama, one of the largest and most famous parts of the British Museum’s collection is the so-called Elgin Marbles, which were looted from the Acropolis by Lord Elgin in the 18th Century. (The Acropolis is the hill in Athens, Greece which has some of the most amazing Greek ruins anywhere, the most famous of which is the Parthenon.) Elgin had (or at least claims to have had) permission from the Ottoman Empire to take stuff home with him, but a) this is one empire asking another empire if they can loot stuff from the other empire’s subjugated people, so, not exactly any moral high ground there Elgin, and b) he took a lot more stuff than the Ottomans said he could have.

Greece has been asking for those statues and sculptures to be returned since they won independence in 1832. That’s right, 1832, 190 years ago. The British Museum has had a number of excuses over the years, one of the biggies of the late 20th Century being “we couldn’t possibly give them back because Athens doesn’t have a nice enough museum to display them” and ignoring Greece’s response of “we will BUILD a museum just for them if you will just give us our damn stuff back!“

Finally, Greece said “fuck you” and built a museum at the bottom of the Acropolis called the Acropolis museum. It is huge, it is gorgeous, the collection of objects is amazing and the educational bits (“this is what it is and why it matters”) are really well done. It’s probably one of the best archaeological museums in the world; it definitely is the best collection of ancient Greek artifacts in the world, both for the size of the collection and the way it’s displayed.

Oh. And it is amazingly passive-aggressive. Every single piece of the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum has an empty spot on display waiting for the piece to be returned to Greece. For example, there are a lot of pieces where Elgin took, say, the nicest (or easiest to remove) one of a set. The column/statue in the OP’s image is one of these. Friezes from the roof of the Parthenon are another example. The Acropolis Museum displays each one of these sets with space for the stolen pieces, along with a picture of what the stolen piece looks like and where it is. It is a giant middle finger at the British Museum, disguised as helpful information.

There’s no chance that the British Museum will return any of this in the next generation. It’s not up to the curators at the British Museum; they don’t get any say in this. The board of governors of the British Museum is made up of old posh English people who genuinely believe that the Empire was awesome and England has a perfect right to everything in the British Museum. They have set policies about what can and can’t be removed from the collection, and according to those policies nothing of any historical or monetary value can be given away or sold. And they actively promote the idea that their predecessors had a perfect right to loot the cultural heritage of the world, and that the museum has a perfect right to keep it forever. The only way to get anything out of the British Museum and back to its rightful place would be to completely replace the entire board of the museum with new people who think completely differently. And that’s not happening any time soon, alas.

gemsofgreece

By the way, the British argument that Greeks wouldn’t know how to care for the antiquities……. Greece has 206 archaeological museums. It’s not only incredibly demeaning as an argument, it’s also straight out false and misleading.

thatlittleegyptologist

One thing (and with the massive caveat of I don’t disagree with the above in the slightest): the Board of Trustees isn’t like that. They’re not all white, they’re not all rich, and they’re not all English. By and large they’re academics. I was speaking to them the other week with regards to repatriation when I visited and they’re actually very much all for it (bar one or two exceptions…looking at you George) and are working on things. A group of 5 of them I can confirm actively loathe Elgin and the marbles room. The problem lies with the British Museum Act of 1968 (hereafter referred to as BMA68) which was a law created by the government to prevent anything within the BM, which the government owns but wants very little do to with unless you’re trying to repatriate fyi, being removed in the “national interest”. Repatriation is, annoyingly, illegal in the case of the contents of the BM. So the Board have been trying to change this by putting pressure in various areas to get the laws changed, and the government screws them by enforcing term limits for serving on the board and then trying to stack the board in their favour to prevent further action. It’s a game of politics and the government do not want to give up BMA68 at all.

I know we like to categorise everyone we’re up against in the fight for repatriation as “old, white, rich guys” but it’s not helpful when it is decidedly not the case. We need to be mad at the right people and focusing on efforts to change this ridiculous law. At this time, supporting projects like the International Training Partnership, which is the BM’s way of building a network of curators and training them so organisations like the British Government can’t say “hurr durr they can’t look after their artefacts” because actually they can, we trained them ourselves. The network of curators also allows them to build mounting international pressure. It’s not going to happen overnight, but the pressure is building now, I promise you.

jessie-and-the-dead

“We need to be mad at the right people” is the crux of SO MANY THINGS

Thank you Lottie, as always.

the-real-seebs

So the problem isn’t even the people who run the museum, who are after all museum people and want museum things to be done well and respectfully, but the government, who want the museum to remind everyone of the time before they made their entire country a laughingstock.

vpgoldenrod

I’d like to share a short story I stumbled onto while reading Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman.

animentality

sirfrogsworth

You know Elon probably saw this and was super mad he still can't fire Halli.

thefrogman

I've already had one person in the notes claim dropping the bombs was the "only option" to end the war.

No.

Shaun has a wonderful breakdown of all the nuances surrounding the Japanese surrender.

If you do not have 2 hours to spare (or you can't watch it at 2x speed), I will give you some bullet points.

Several American leaders of the time felt the bombs provided no assistance in ending the war.

Japan was already defeated. They wanted to surrender but were stubborn and wanted conditions.

Their only concern was their god-like emperor stay in power and not be executed.

That was their concern before the bombs. That was their concern after the bombs. Nothing changed in their minds.

They didn't actually care that the bombs killed people. It took them several days to even have a meeting after the first bomb dropped.

The idea that dropping the bomb would save millions of casualties was invented *after* the bomb was dropped and was pulled out of someone's ass to cover said ass.

There was never going to be an invasion.

People think we dropped the bombs and the Japanese leadership was like, "Oh shit! We give up!"

But in reality, we dropped the first bomb and they were like, "I'm busy tomorrow, can we have the bomb meeting on Thursday?"

We dropped the bombs to show the world we had the bombs.

Japan was a convenient and timely excuse to that end.

demilypyro

I wonder how rich christians keep themselves convinced that they're not, like, the super villains of real life

demilypyro

"it's god's will that I make everything as shitty and lame as possible for everyone everywhere" ???

demilypyro

wasn't the whole premise of christianity supposed to be that if you do shitty things that you very much are judged

because-im-freaking-greed

So there was a dude named Calvin who decided that whether you go to heaven or not was decided at the start of time, based on your actions in life, and modern Christians in sects that follow that idea (all the major American ones) decided that meant the things Good Christians do are always good and deserving of heaven

gandalfsbignaturals

when good people do bad things, its actually good, because theyre good people who are definitely going to heaven, which means they cant do bad things.

when bad people do good things, its actually bad, because theyre bad people who are going to hell, which means they cant do good things.

also, if you werent a good person, you wouldnt be rich, you would be poor. the simple fact that you are rich is proof that god loves you more than all the dirty poors, which means youre a good person and none of the things you do are ever bad.

any attempts to make life better for other people are actually bad because if they were righteous their lives would already be good, and the only reason their lives are bad is because they are bad people. if you do good things for those people, who are bad, then youre actually doing bad things, because youre encouraging them to keep being bad. if they want to be good and have a good life like you, they just need to start being good and get a job and make lots of money, and then theyll be a good person.

american christianity is not built on any actual, reasonable interpretation of their religious text, nor is it founded on any sort of consistent or legible moral code. it is founded on the idea that good people are born good and bad people are born bad and good things only happen to good people and bad things only happen to bad people, and any mental gymnastics necessary to make that philosophy work are justified because the alternative would mean actually doing some introspection and changing ones behavior, which is actually the devil talking to you and telling you to stop being good.

the point of it all is not to encourage evil people to be good. its to convince evil people theyre already good and thus deserve all the nice things they have, and to convince good people theyre already bad and thus deserve all the bad things that happen to them.

luckyladylily

This is also why American conservatives apply their morals in a completely detached way to their leadership. It does not matter that trump broke and continues to break every concept of sexual morality that they hold, because he is on the Right Side, and is thus a Good Man, and any appearance of evil is by definition fleeting and unimportant. By definition, nothing Trump can do is evil to them.

On the other hand, no matter how good someone on the left may seem, they are categorically evil so what good they do must be a trick designed to make you trust them, or secretly evil somehow (giving the starving food makes them lazy!! Is that what Jesus would want!?)

Now where you might think this breaks down is when a conservative is poor and thus by just world theory deserves it. But how they actually think is that they are poor because of all the evil leftists doing the will of Satan and ruining everything. Because in their religion god can be overpowered by satanic forces of [insert here things their leaders tell them to hate, like gay people]. Think of how many articles conservatives run about gays people killing god and such. And that is why bad things happen to good people.

It is a world view completely detached from reality and the supposed texts of their religion that runs on hate and resentment of the other as a source of religious fervor. People are racist and homophobic or otherwise hateful so hard they have a religious experience about it, and that is where much of american christianity is at.

ogrishpuntocom

nobuddy feels like they have a sharp attention span these days, right? and we all just click “agree on terms of service” because its hard to love yourself sometimes, well

enter Terms of Service, Didn’t Read: a website and a browser addon that streamlines the terms of service of many popular web services to be read by the tech sunday drivers.

It’s graded from A (great) to E (awful) and if you have the addon you have access to the info about the website on your bar

thelawfulchaotic

How to Argue Like an Asshole

Good evening, friends, let me tell you some Secrets on how to argue like (and with) assholes. I’m writing this because I keep running into a particular asshole, and I need to stop engaging with them, and so this is an instruction sheet for myself as well as you guys.

First, try to avoid assholes; they don’t deserve your time and energy. But, if an Argument is unavoidable, here are a few tips on how to emerge unscathed.

Let go of the idea that you’re going to win.

You’re not gonna win. Nobody wins in an argument with an asshole. But, on the other hand, you can make them lose. You can deprive them of their entertainment and their triumph.

How???

Do not present your side of this debate.

This is so counter-intuitive for most of us who believe in things like, oh, science, or real facts, or the idea that real facts can be determined by science. Here’s a cool terrible thing about humans: certainty has nothing to do with facts. And when people are certain, that is when they become assholes.

When someone’s only goal is to win an argument, any real evidence or facts you give them is just ammunition for them to turn against you.

You will not convince them. So what should you be doing?

Destroy their arguments.

This is a thing of joy, because it’s what assholes are used to doing. They are, at heart, morons who don’t know how to construct, only how to destroy.

I used to be super emotional about arguments like this. I couldn’t think of anything to say while the other person ranted on about their horrifying bigotry. Now I’m a lawyer, and I’ve learned to weaponize my essentially nitpicky nature. For money.

So here are some easy tactics you can remember and deploy:

- Make them define the words they use. Nitpick the definitions.

- Turn questions back on them. If they ask you “why do you believe x”, ask them why they believe y. If they pull some “I asked first” shit, ask them why they’re afraid to defend their beliefs.

- Call them emotional. If possible, pick out specific emotions. This is especially devastating when you’re debating a man, as he will get more emotional as a result.

- “Why is that funny? I don’t get it.” Making people explain mean jokes can be a delight; they just wilt the more you question them about the underlying assumptions.

- Laugh at any especially dumb shit. Like they use some slogan or catchphrase that’s obviously untrue, due to science, or essentially ridiculous, like “we’ve made America great again,” and you just blurt out laughing. If they get mad, tell them – oh, so sorry, I’ll shut up, I’m giving you the floor to talk about your beliefs. I’m respecting you. This is a goddamn power move. It gives you the high ground, and also the implied control over the situation. The floor belongs to you, but you are yielding it to someone because you can.

- If they make an awkward exit, let them. Especially if they call the discussion “political.” It means they’re feeling attacked. Graciously allow them to retreat with their tail between their legs. If they storm off, allow them to do that too. Congratulations; you’ve ended the argument and you don’t have to deal with it anymore.

Basically: hand the asshole a shovel, and let ‘em dig. Relieve yourself of the burden to convince them they are wrong, and just sour their fun instead.

–

Additionally, these are the tactics that assholes use, consciously or subconsciously, all the time. Recognize them. Once you know what they are, you can become immune to the intimidation and belittling tactics.

Good luck.